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Neil Patrick Harris and Josh Radnor discussed their diverging approaches to acting on How I Met Your Mother
Harris admitted he often wondered if his comedic performance annoyed Radnor during filming
Radnor reflected on personal challenges adjusting to fame and praised Harris for his iconic portrayal of Barney Stinson
Neil Patrick Harris and Josh Radnor got real about their sometimes challenging relationship.
Harris, 52, appeared on the Monday, March 23 episode of How We Made Your Mother, a podcast hosted by his former costar Radnor and How I Met Your Mother series co-creator Craig Thomas.
During their conversation, Harris told Radnor, 51, “I always kind of felt that that my performance annoyed you, Josh.”
“What?” Radnor asked, surprised. “Tell me more. Tell me more.”
Harris said he was “laser-focused” on making the comedy happen on set, explaining, “I was very indifferent to the heart and the pathos of it because I wasn’t written that way. And I know that was your job, right?”
On HIMYM, Harris’s Barney Stinson was an over-the-top ladies’ man, and he was responsible for many of the series’ biggest and boldest jokes. Radnor, however, played Ted Mosby, perennially lovesick and always searching for his true love.
Neil Patrick Harris (left) and Josh Radnor in ‘How I Met Your Mother’
Credit: Richard Cartwright/CBS via Getty
Harris explained, “I remember often when we were filming, and I sensed frustration from you because you wanted the scene to be like a good scene and I was looking at you like, ‘Motherf—er, I’m doing spit takes.’ ”
Thomas, 50, opined that their differences were part of what made the show great.
“I’m not like airing dirty laundry or anything,” Harris said. “I’m just saying I think it required like multiple perspectives of all of us to create it. But as it was happening, I was sort of like, ‘I think that Josh is just kind of annoyed by the gnat flying around all the time just doing bits.’ ”
Radnor, for his part, said he also felt tension sometimes. “I think it might have been a little bit of confusion between actor and character. Like Barney was often incredibly almost dismissive of Ted, and you were so good at playing that. I think sometimes I felt dismissed by Neil, but I was being dismissed by Barney,” he said.
Looking back on it, Radnor said he was “delighted by our weird chemistry.”
He explained, “I never doubt that Barney is obsessed with Ted, and I never doubt that he wants the best for him. And also sometimes, oftentimes, they’re on totally different pages, like in terms of where their heads are, what they’re looking to do … We were like inhabiting different worlds, but they were all under this larger umbrella world.”
Harris said it’s nice to “have these conversations now” because while it was happening, it felt like a “disconnect.”
“It’s not like an unresolved issue that I have or anything. I just remember being at craft service or something and you were personally just more like buddy buddy with Jason [Segel] and that we’d like say hey to each other or whatever but like we were sort of doing different shows when we were filming it,” he remembered. “I remember thinking ‘Is Josh mad at me’ a lot. Like ‘Am I doing something to annoy him?’ ”
Neil Patrick Harris (left) and Josh Radnor in ‘How I Met Your Mother’
Credit: Monty Brinton/CBS via Getty
Radnor said that he was also handling his own personal life while filming the show. He noted that Harris, Segel and Alyson Hannigan had all done shows before, and Cobie Smulders was a “comfortable” person.
“This was my fourth pilot. I was not a famous person, and I think that I had a harder adjustment with losing my anonymity, being the center of this show,” he said. “I didn’t know how to process this in a way that felt healthy, other than kind of trying to keep it at arm’s length.”
“If I was like a little pissy or something, I’m sorry,” he said. “Like I think that I was just trying to manage a lot of different things and emotions, and they came out sideways sometimes.”
Radnor also remembered that months before they were cast in the show, he and Harris did a play called The Paris Letter, where they played lovers. “We were doing this very intense, intimate theater piece and then suddenly we were Ted and Barney literally like four months later, and it gave me vertigo,” he explained.
Thomas said that Radnor and Harris had “different assignments” and “very, very different roles,” but that ultimately contributed to the secret sauce of what makes How I Met Your Mother, which ran from 2005 to 2014, so special. “And I think your guys’ specific combination as a duo was fantastic,” he said.
Radnor said that for a long time, he wondered if Harris’ comedy was more “valuable” than his “heart-forward thing.” But now, rewatching the series for the podcast, “It took me a long time to realize that the task that I was given, I was doing it really well. And I’ve actually gone back and kind of forgiven myself for being so hard on myself in those years.”
Radnor also praised Harris for giving a “totally classic performance” on the show. “So, I’m glad to even say these words to you. Like, it feels good because I think in the last analysis, we just made something really cool together,” he said.
Read the original article on People